Local Authorities Forum
The National Outdoor Events Association provides the largest network of Local Authorities within the events industry with a membership of over 100 authorities out of some 400 involved in events. The Local Authorities Forum works proactively to provide authorities with the latest information available from the events industry. NOEA provides a range of services, including:
Contacts for suppliers, details of other authorities, NOEA Yearbook, conferences and conventions, bulletin board, website, newsletters, training, and legal advice.
The general view was that Event Officers were being given many more responsibilities and hence were reluctant to attend Conferences etc; also training courses and visit Exhibitions.
The organizers of The Event Show well appreciated the efforts of NOEA in arranging the “Spotlight on Local Authority” Seminars by providing conference room facilities and thus encouraging more local authorities to have another reason for attending their Exhibitions.
The Local Authority Meetings and NOEA Conferences should be made open to both Local Authorities and Suppliers in general so that everyone got to know each other and their different challenges – perhaps a designated session at future Regional NOEA Conferences.
It was important, however, that the Local Authority Event Organisers’ Group (LAEOG) remained solely local authority based but maintaining a relationship with suppliers in the way of Fully Fused Fireworks when they made a presentation at the last LAEOG meeting.
However communication between the local authorities and suppliers was important as this was the way LAEOG could get feedback about from them about the difficulties they face when moving from one authority to another etc. This was where NOEA’s role came into play as NOEA had both suppliers and local authority members - a good forum for this exchange of information.
There was a major knowledge gap between local authorities and everyone should be getting together to exchange information and share experiences with others – these were similar issues as with event organisers. Every opportunity made available by NOEA/LAEOG should be used to spread knowledge, information and expertise – Website, Billboard, Newsletters.
There would be many technological issues now and in the future – all these should be communicated by whatever means available to all members and indeed to be shared with the Local Authority Event Organisers Group (LAEOG) and vice versa with their sources of information and experiences and of course
not forgetting the Event Industry Forum. The key was to have easy access to this and the NOEA Billboard would be partly the answer but it was suggested that webcasting could be another means of communication.
It was generally considered that those on the NOEA Council and a few others had a great deal of knowledge, expertise and experience to pass onto NOEA members and others in general – this should be a
highly prized service to members.
There was a need to co-ordinate information from local authorities in one central place and that should be the NOEA Local Authority website/billboard. Information should be provided electronically which could be accessed easily for reference and comments.
NOEA should share the vast knowledge and information of Members with those who might have little idea of what was going on. Members were privy to a whole range of information and this was only by joining NOEA. Information could be obtained by links to other websites eg. HSE and BSI.
NOEA should create a “hub” – a website which everyone would recognise as the source of information – unique to local event organisers.
Local Authorities were beginning to realise that outdoor events meant big profits for them. They were all starting to compete with each other. This could be a national network - the problem was communication
with local authority organizers. Of course NOEA Members were well placed in this respect - there were already many means of communication with each other – NOEA Conventions, Regional Conferences and the “Spotlight on Local Authority” Seminars. NOEA would not duplicate the work of LAEOG.
There was a huge knowledge gap between the local authorities and some sort of benchmarking model was required. Examples of what local authorities organised could be posted to the website eg. experiences of MELA and other special events; job opportunities, model contracts and guidelines for comment. There should be a local authority supplier link but BE AWARE of giving too much information! Also to include noise, disability, smoking and other regulation issues; also examples of risk assessments and lists of recommended “experts” to help in different areas.
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